Dogs of War
by Stealth Dragon
Summary: After being captured, Sheppard is separated from his team. Big mistake. Shep whump, some team whump. Violence, language. Gen all the way.


A/N: Written in a fic exchange for Wildcat88. This story has been beta'd. All mistakes are mine. Please don't point them out.

Dogs of War

Their first mistake was thinking that John was still drugged and unconscious. Their second was marking him as useless, therefore separating him from his team.

"That old rich pervert Diff should like him. He looks like something Diff would enjoy."

"Diff likes them pretty and docile, it's why he won't take soldiers. He'd have him shot in a day." The speaker booted John in the ribs. "He's useless."

Useless because he wasn't as big as Ronon.

"... who'd only be good in the fighting pits. No way can he be trained."

"I hear Movras is good at breaking the wild ones."

Useless because he wasn't a woman.

"Good breeding stock, that one."

Useless because he wasn't a genius.

"The smart one they'll probably ship to the fortress to fix. Talk has it that he's good with Ancestor stuff." Which meant that either these people really had been watching them the whole time just like John had guessed, or had done their homework.

The speaker sighed. "Guess we could let Diff be the judge. We might get a couple of sen for this one at least. Better than nothing. I hate wasting flesh in the furnace."

"Can't be all that much trouble; hasn't even woken up, yet."

"Maybe," said the speaker, but didn't sound too sure. Neither did he sound like he cared. "We'll let Diff take a look. If he don't like what he sees, then we'll ship him to the stock yards, let him be bought as Wraith bait." John heard the scrape and crunch of boots walking away, followed by another pair then the whine and clank of a metal door closing.

John slitted his eyelids to the dusky cell of rock and a front wall of rusty metal bars, almost perfectly Middle Ages except for the sickly lights flickering behind fogged glass covers bolted to the ceiling. He'd opened his eyes once before while the drug was still a fine mist shrouding his brain, when the guards had arrived the first time, making John idly wonder why he was dreaming he was in a Mad Max movie. At the time his head had felt like it was under water. Even then he'd heard loud and clear everything that he needed to hear.

The others gone, this one staying because he was useless, because he wasn't big, or smart, or female. And it had made John smile because, damn it, he loved it when the bad guys really did judge a book by its cover.

John watched the cell door and the hallway beyond, waiting. Waiting. Waiting some more. Time passed without a way to measure it, minutes crawling like crippled insects over John's taut skin (ibad analogy, John/i). If they took his team someplace else, then he probably didn't have a lot of time. Slavery was the Pegasus galaxy's dirty little secret – an underground market dependent on Wraith cullings and terror, where the displaced, the homeless, the kinless are taken and put to better use perpetuating future cultures, protecting those who could afford protection, and making heads or tails of Ancestor weapons. Natives talked of the slavers like they were a myth, but if anyone actually bought from them, they sure as hell weren't saying. It made John wonder when the slavers got wind of the Lanteans – before or after the Genii had circulated those damn wanted posters?

Or maybe they'd just been that desperate to replenish their supplies with good stock. Between the starving Wraith, Replicators, Micheal and the Hoffan sickness, pickings had to be pretty damn slim right now.

John waited, and waited, and...

Footsteps echoed down the cavern hall toward him. John lowered his eyelids to an even narrower slits, blurring his surroundings but he didn't need to see everything when shapes would do. A human blob of brown and gray stopped before the doors. Keys rattled, the door clicked and swung open. The jailer entered, bending to set something on the floor – John guessed a bowl of water or food but that didn't matter. He waited a little longer, time making his skin twitch and flutter with tense anticipation. He stayed perfectly still even as every muscle tightened and his heart hammered. Just a little longer. One more minute.

The man rose with a grunt and the bored sigh of someone who'd rather be doing other things. That's when John struck, exploding into motion with a forward whip of his leg knocking the jailer's legs out from under him. It was an arched sweep bringing the bastard down on his back and hard on his head, knocking him out cold. John rolled to his hand and knees, pushing past the dizziness that threatened to redrop him.

"Damn it!" he hissed. He shook the spinning off. That's why he preferred stunning over drugs. Pins and needles hurt but were easier to ignore. Drugs played roulette with how long they took to metabolize. Alert as John was, there was still a remnant of fog clinging to his brain that not even adrenaline could get rid of. He was also feeling nauseas.

John snatched the key's from the jailer's belt and unlocked the metal collar from his neck, taking a second to rub his bruised throat. The stupid thing had been pressing into his Adam's apple, and that kind of unrelenting pressure made swallowing a nightmare. He then rummaged through the layers of leather and cloth for a weapon. What he found was a stick, a damn metal stick hooked to the man's belt. John unhooked it and looked it over in disgust, but it was better than nothing and now wasn't the time to be fickle.

Still, a damn stick?

Using a handkerchief and scarf he found in the man's pockets, John bound him, gagged him, then gave him a taste of having a friggin' metal collar around his neck.

"Hurts, don't it?" John said, then patted the man's shoulder and left, making sure to close the cell behind him. He could only hope the lighting crappy enough for fellow jailers to realize that the body in the cell wasn't looking a little ioff/i.

Now that John thought about it, he wondered if he should have taken a few of the guy's clothes. He winced. The answer was yes – even a half-assed disguise bought precious seconds if nothing else, especially in this crappy lighting. He blamed the lapse of foresight on the lingering drugs not letting him think clearly. Another reason why he preferred being stunned.

John pressed himself to the wall, keeping as best he could to the shadows, which wasn't all that hard. The moisture of the cool rock soaked through both shirts to his skin, making him shiver, which in turn made his head start to throb. He moved as fast as was safe and silent, walking heel to toe, keeping his motions smooth.

Voices echoing his way made him pause, stiffen, then dart across the corridor into darker shadows. Two men in leathers, ragged shirts and shaded goggles shoved up onto their foreheads wandered by, droning too low and their accents too thick for John to pick up their conversation. The moment they were around the bend, John detached from the shadows and moved.

The less commonly known and more subconscious escape tactic of "follow your nose" aimed John in the direction of what smelled like oil – not cooking oil, motor oil, if a little less chemical and a lot more sweet. Where there was life to rot and decay on a planet, there was oil, a commodity on any world that had somehow managed to reach the technological levels of combustion engines. The Genii used it, and certain areas of Hoff. Oil and gas, it turned out, was universal after all. And where there was oil, there were machines; if John was lucky, machines that traveled.

Several turns and leaping into alcoves and darker shadows later brought John to a fair-sized cavern; an organized junkyard of mechanical parts – some on shelves, some in boxes, others laid out on rickety wooden tables. But tucked away at the back like metal horses in a stall sat five vehicles, like dune buggies after Frankenstein had tinkered with them. Across from the cars was a set of massive wooden double doors, thick but warped and showing a lot of wear.

John tried not to smile at the convenience and give life a reason to inconvenience him. The "garage" wasn't exactly empty; John could hear garbled conversations and see shadows flitting along the walls and between metal shelves of more parts. When the shadows moved beyond John's line of sight, he pushed off from where he'd ducked and dashed to the thickest shadows between two precariously packed shelves. From there, he moved from shelf to shelf, playing hide and seek in a maze that wouldn't take him directly to his destination.

John ducked around the next row of shelves and skidded to a stop two feet from one hell of a monster Mad Max extra. The two stared at each other, John startled and the other guy stunned. Big Guy's expression was bug-eyed and vacant as he pointed a meaty finger at John.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Um..." John stuttered. "Inspector. I'm here to, uh... check your vehicles' emissions, make sure they're not releasing too much."

Big Guy's brow furrowed, then he turned, cupping one thick hand to the side of his mouth. "Hey Farv. Know anything about a -"

iNot Good! /iJohn cut him off with a whack to the back of the head with the metal stick. But instead of knocking Big Guy out, Big Guy merely cringed, rubbing the spot as he whirled on John and grabbed him by the neck, "What in the nether's d'you do that for? You ain't no inspector," and squeezed.

Without even thinking about it, John jammed the stick's end into Big Guy's gut. Big Guy convulsed, releasing John before dropping to the floor in a twitching, drooling heap of leather and thick limbs. John looked at the stick in surprise.

"Really should have figured that out sooner," he said. He took off at a run when voices started converging around him, didn't slow when when he struck out at another man heading his way, knocking him to the side. He took a sharp right, twisting out of the way of a third and zapping a fourth to the floor, tripping up number three. Adding to the advantage, John stopped long enough to shove a shelf over, then another in an ear-splitting crash of metal.

Then he was at the cars and jumping into the seat of the nearest one. Life, however, had decided to inconvenience him – no keys. Not even a discernible ignition.

But John, like most guys with a love of fast machines, had a soft spot and knowledge of things mechanical; choppers and cars. Praying that car design was as universal as the use of fossil fuels, John tugged at the exposed wires.

That's when he noticed the switches where his Earth-conditioned brain had assumed the radio to be. He flipped each switch and the car coughed, jolted and rumbled to life, leaving the rest easy enough for his Earth-conditioned brain to handle. He popped the clutch, put it into gear and tore out of the stall straight toward the door, forcing the remaining three guys coming for him to leap out of the way. John tensed, and when the thick grill meant the door, ducked. Wood exploded showering him with splinters and sand from the barren gray wastes outside. John peeled across soot-gray earth baked rock hard under a dusky sky.

Now John allowed himself to smile.

Then frowned on realizing that he had no idea where he was going.

-----------------------------

There was a road, like a scar paler than the surrounding gray stretching to the horizon, and John didn't have the luxury of using it should the bad guys manage to catch up with him. He needed time to plan, room to make those plans happen, and was still too woozy from lingering drugs to pull off slick moves in a high speed chase. So he had two choices: the open gray nothing to his left, or the distant serrated line of what he assumed (hoped) was a mountain range on his right, where there would be crevices, ravines and other nooks and crannies to hide in.

_No-brainer right there, John. _He gave the wheel a hard twist to the right, bouncing off the road onto only slightly less smooth terrain. John aimed at an angle rather than a straight line. As much as he loved straight lines, he needed the distance between him and the bad guys to keep increasing. During that time, he planned.

Number one, he needed a destination: a village, refueling station, anywhere he could grab some clothes for a makeshift disguise and ask questions about the stock yards or that fortress while he had the time. He highly doubted this planet dotted with stock yards, unless they divided their merchandise according to use, but it was smarter to keep everything localized – no one liked to travel out of their way when they didn't have to. Maybe the fort those guys had mentioned – nothing like a massive fortification to hold folk who slept, drank and ate self-preservation. It still boggled John that in a galaxy with bigger problems than making a quick buck by any means they'd have slavery.

Except the more he thought about it, the more he took into consideration all that he'd heard back at that prison, the more it made sense. Desperate times, desperate measures and that crap; you lose a chunk of civilization and needed that chunk to bring in the crops, build shelters, increase population, then a quick means of replacing that chunk was going to look incredibly tempting. Life was ugly and predictable like that, and now here he and his team were, caught dead center in it, sinking ever deeper into the dark underbelly of this galaxy.

It was friggin' ridiculous, because no way would a die-hard soldier who'd out-foxed the Wraith for years, a literal warrior princess and a mouthy scientist who could McGuyver a nuke out of paper clips and toothpaste make any kind of a decent slave – tamed or not. The desperation for flesh must really be bad.

The so-called dune buggy wasn't much of one. The closer John got to the mountains, the rougher the terrain became until the bouncing and bucking made his spine feel capable of detaching from his skull. The mountains – plateaus, actually; slate gray and ominous – loomed ever closer until they towered over John.

And that's when the car decided to give out, wheezing, coughing and jolting to a stop. If John was reading the gauges right, he was out of gas. John stomped on the useless gas pedal and punched the wheel. "Son of a bitch!" Pushing his hair back with both hands, John slumped against the seat.

The plan hadn't changed; he still needed to get to a town or some equivalent. As long as that road and this range maintained a straight course, and as long as John followed it, he should eventually stumble onto civilization.

"Should" being the kicker that would make or break all this half-assed planning of his, but it wasn't like John had much of a choice. So huffing it on foot it was.

After giving the wheel another smack out of spite, John hopped out and circled the car, rummaging through its various compartments. Only an idiot would drive through a desert planet unprepared and John wasn't going to make assumptions on the bad-guy's I.Q.s just because of an easy escape.

Too easy, maybe? Or maybe they hadn't cared, what with John being useless and all. For all he knew, they'd decided him not worth the man-power and waste of gas to give chase, feeling the terrain sufficient enough to get rid of him. As much as John would love for that to be the case, he wasn't going to take the chance, therefore decided to stick close to the range rather then head back to the road.

John grinned when he pulled out a beaten pack full of clothes and very basic supplies – two dingy shirts, a pair of worn trousers, a weather-beaten leather long-coat with a hood and a tatty brown scarf. Now that John had stopped and most of his adrenaline had worn off, he realized just how cool it was; around the lower fifties if he had to guess, enough to get goose-bumps popping up along his arms. He kept his own pants, not trusting the life expectancy of the trousers, pulled on a shirt then the coat, and hid his face with the hood and scarf. Beneath the clothes lay the food: a canteen of water and what looked almost like power bars wrapped in thick foil.

Shouldering the pack, John started off.

The day declined, evening coming fast with the car still a distant dot behind John. Cool gave into cold and a nipping wind that tugged at the long coat. Beneath the food John had found what looked to be a small flashlight. He contemplated using it to keep going but decided against it if the bad guys really were – and still were – looking for him. He clicked it on long enough to find shelter, keeping his back to the road to hide the light with his body. He located a small outcropping surrounded by boulders within a narrow ravine and hunkered into it. It was small, and so much as a slight shift resulted in John bumping his head, but it kept most of the wind off.

When daylight came, John awoke with a groan to stiff muscles, a numb leg, and temperatures feeling more like the mid-forties. He felt like a rusty Jack-in-the box being forced out as he unfolded himself from the alcove. After stomping feeling back into his legs, he warmed his muscles by wandering in a circle, breakfasting on fruit-flavored saw-dust packed into a bar. Then he started off.

The wind had picked up, pushing against him as though intent on slowing him down. When hunger hit, he ignored it until evening – McKay carried more power bars in his pockets than the pack did rations. Before squeezing into a crevice for another aching night's sleep, John ate half a bar. The next morning, he finished it off.

John remembered slogging through sand that sucked him down ankle high in the blistering heat, then snow beating the skin of his face to leather with cold winds. This trek was nothing – obnoxious, biting, but nothing. It was, however, endless, with the mountains on his right and eternity on every other side. To occupy his mind away from that eternity he cataloged what he should have done better: found maps, charts, anything to point him in the right direction... except he hadn't had time. Head to the 'gate, come back with a 'jumper and reinforcements... except he had no friggin' clue where the 'gate was. This wasn't the world they had been on when they were captured – that world had been gentle conifers and soft grass underfoot – and they'd been off-and-on unconscious in the cells, too groggy to string four words together in between.

_Face it, John. You can't get more impromptu plan-as-you-go than this. _Life in general was impromptu but that didn't stop the regret of not giving himself a little more advantage – like going for a car with more fuel, or one with maps in it. And who the hell doesn't store charts and maps in a car? Unless they'd been restocking that one, or the bad guys were just that reliant on the road.

John shrugged. Not a bad advantage, actually. Without maps and charts, they wouldn't dare risk going off their source of direction just to find little old him. And as long as that road kept going straight, then John would remain unscrewed.

With that thought, he veered off his own path toward the nearest clime-able plateau and started to climb. After scaling Atlantis on more than one occasion, the pock-marked and craggy rock-face was a kid's jungle gym. He free-climbed to what he guessed was half-way, onto a fair-sized ledge. Leaning back against the rock, he squinted into the distance at the road a pale thread against the gray. John smiled – still not screwed yet. He climbed back down.

Later that night, life stopped being so accommodating. John woke with a start to the shattering crack of distant thunder. Ignoring it, he curled tighter into his niche and was just about to drift off when the clouds broke, dumping a frigid deluge at a slant. John gasped when it hit him like thousands of malleable knives. It didn't soften until morning, going from buffeting to a lazy pour, worming its way through the protective leather, wetting his neck and trailing like cold fingers down the indent of his spine.

By late afternoon, John was soaked to the bone and stumbling, he was shivering so hard. By evening, he had no choice but to expose himself to the elements on a ledge if he didn't want to drown in the swiftly filling ravines and dells. The area must have been one big flood plain, because by morning John was slogging ankle-deep through a damn lake. Suddenly, walks through a desert – hot, cold, didn't matter – didn't seem so bad.

By the next evening, it was knee high and stayed that way. John curled shivering and aching on another ledge, too narrow for any real sleep as he fought to keep his feet from slipping out from under him. He entertained for all of three seconds the thought of finding higher ground and waiting the flood out.

John snorted, spraying a fine mist of water and mucus. He'd kicked through sand in a sandstorm, snow in a snow storm. He could survive a little water. His team was out there, waiting for him, for rescue. He couldn't afford to wait and like hell he was going to even if the water was waist high.

The next morning, his feet hurt, his legs throbbed, and his chest felt like a giant hand was giving his ribs a gentle squeeze. He kept one arm wrapped around himself in a feeble attempt at preserving warmth and the other perpendicular against his chest so he could cough into his fist. Because life had felt it was being too easy on John, it had decided to dump a little congestion on him overnight.

The rain continued steady and endless for two more days. On the second day, like a dying animal with just a little fight left, it increased the force, each drop bruising; the solid sheen blinding. John stumbled, colliding with rock faces and tripping over pot holes. He stretched a shaky hand until he touched the steady surface of a rock wall and let it guide him. But the water around his feet hid all.

John felt his foot give, taking his body with it. He went under fast, so fast he was in mid-gasp and swallowing water. He felt himself swept away, then he was being pummeled against hard surface after hard surface until pinned, caught in a crevice. John's lungs shrieked at him, burning as they tried to expel and exhale at the same time. Panic grayed his mind, turning him mindless and animal-wild as he clawed and kicked and ripped his way to the surface. His head broke and his chest bucked as he tried to gasp lungfuls. He scrambled his way up the wall he'd been pinned to until his hand flapped against a flat surface. With a final heave, John hauled himself up and over, flopping like a dead fish onto his stomach where he choked up the water in his lungs. He then rolled onto his back, gasping, coughing and sucking in air until his flanks felt ready to split.

Then he passed out.

-------------------------

John awoke to aches, pains and the inability to breathe deep enough and satisfy the demands of his lungs. He tried, but was met with resistance and a sharp pain in his side that made him gasp out. Opening his eyes to a solid gray ceiling, John flopped his numb hand over his body to the source of that pain on his left, probing gently.

Not gently enough, reigniting the pain that pushed a hiss through his clenched teeth.

"Damn... it..." John breathed. He lay there, breathing carefully as he stared into the endless gray. He no longer felt so cold and wondered if that was a bad thing but was too content to care. He was tired – bone-deep tired, and hard surface beneath his back or not, was ready to sleep for days. His eyes started sliding closed.

They inched back open.

He couldn't. He couldn't wait, because others were waiting for him. His team. His team was waiting for him.

With a shiver and mental shake, John threw off as much of the lethargy as he could, just enough to roll right onto his stomach. Sliding his hands beneath him, he slowly worked his way up: hands and knees, then knees. Bracing one hand against the rock wall beside him, he pushed himself to his feet on shaky legs and stayed there, waiting for them to steady and support him. It took longer than it probably should have but he was able to push away from the wall and stumble down the ledge's incline.

Half-way down he paused, blinking at his surroundings.

The rain had stopped, probably some time ago, long enough for the flood to have completely receded, leaving only mud and silt.

John's heart pounded. How the hell long had he been unconscious? Or did the water simply clear up that fast? John nodded; the latter. Had to be the latter. He could see puddles and a few streams still trickling swiftly away. All the same, alarm had dumped adrenaline into John's veins, pushing back more of the fatigue. He resumed shivering, because of the adrenaline or cold he couldn't say and didn't really care which it was. Shivering kept you warm, adrenaline kept you going, so it was all good. Yes, he was in a bad way. Yes, he should probably be worried, and would be worried after he found his team, because if he stopped now the going would get harder.

John pushed his body forward, down the rest of the natural ramp and back onto his path. Another day past, another night spent huddled in a crevice ankle deep in mud, drinking little water and eating a quarter of his rations. Mud made the going even slower, putting more demands on his aching legs and his aching lungs. He fell more than he walked, brought down by unseen holes and vicious coughing fits that left his rib muscles cramped and tight.

It narrowed his goal to lifting a foot and setting it down, lifting and setting down, lifting and setting down. The mud was thick and hell bent on taking off his boots, pulling on his legs that turned aches to pains centered around his knees. Falling had him coated in the crap all the way up to his chin, making it impossible to wipe it off his hands. Although on the positive side, the layering mud made for good insulation.

It was a short lived positive because pushing through this mud was wearing him out, turning the trek into those nightmares where you run and run and never move. On top of it all, all the coughing was slapping the back of his throat with mucus. Between that and the cold air, every breath felt like rubbing sand-paper against his throat, every swallow like having nails raking the tender membrane.

But his team was waiting. He couldn't stop. He sure as hell better find a town soon or his body was going to stop him no matter what his brain demanded.

John's foot sank into another hole and he fell to his hands and knees. "Son of a bi-" He blinked in surprise.

Life had decided to accommodate again. Marking up the perfect mud only inches from John's nose was tracks, tire tracks overlapping each other to and from a wide passage between two plateaus.

"Son of a bitch," John breathed, and fought not to laugh hysterically. There was only one reason for there to be this marked-up of a path out in the middle of nowhere. Okay, more than one but it all converged on a destination, possibly civilization, possibly a place with a store of supplies. The thought pumped more adrenaline through John's body, getting him back to his feet and into the pass. It narrowed deeper in, sloping gently then widening into a small valley where water had gathered around a massive, weather-worn hill beneath a tangled mess of storm-gray vines. The trail vanished into that water.

John still followed it into the lake – more like a giant puddle that barely reached past his ankles. The hill was way too steep for any vehicle to climb, let alone a man to walk up its side. It was more like a massive wall, geometric and craggy and an easy climb had John's chest not hurt so damn much. Reach up too far and his ribs felt like they were threatening to impale him. John circled the hill, searching for where the tracks reemerged, but the "lake" was wide, slowly bleeding away down ravines and through passes.

"Thought it was too good to be true," John said. He was left with one choice: find a place to hide and wait for the bad guys to come back and make a new trail to follow. The cars had been pretty loud; there was no way John wouldn't know they were coming.

John turned and went back the way he had come while keeping a weather eye out for a suitable place to hold up. Rock jutted in odd places, too far to reach or too steep to climb. The best he could do still required effort that was going to hurt like a bitch. Gritting his teeth, John dug his fingers and the toe of his boot into the mud and hauled.

The mud pulled away easy as half-melted butter, revealing pale gray rock underneath, more smooth than polished marble.

Too smooth. Unnaturally smooth. John stared at it, brow furrowed. Then he touched it feeling barely any texture. It was cool and familiar under his fingertips, almost vibrating, it seemed...

John's eyes widened. "Holy crap."

He wasn't touching rock. He was touching metal, man-made metal, like what you would find on a building or a...

"It's a ship," John said. He coughed up a biting laugh. "It's a damn ship." And where there was a ship, there was an entrance. John kicked through the water, circling, pulling away mud and creeping vines. He came to a massive cluster of vines that with one tug pulled away easy as a door, revealing a real door and a familiar panel next to it.

John's next laugh was hysterical.

This wasn't just any ship, it was a damn Ancient ship.

"_The smart one they'll probably ship to the fortress to fix. Talk has it that he's good with Ancestor stuff." _

John slapped his hand over his mouth, blocking the laughter. Of course McKay was good with Ancestor stuff. Damn good, good enough to get this thing out of the mud and off the ground with the right equipment.

McKay was here.

And John was all ready to palm the door open and march right in when a rather McKay-like voice whispered how that probably wasn't a good idea. A Teyla-like voice agreed; a Ronon-like voice reminded John there was more than one way to infiltrate a fortress. John didn't need all three voices to tell him the way – helping McKay repair the Orion had made their every nook and cranny as familiar to John as Atlantis; possibly more familiar since they weren't the size of Manhattan.

After recovering the door, John went back the way he'd come, going for about fifteen feet before tearing away vines and pulling away mud and silt until he found what he was looking for – an access ladder. Climbing it was hell on his chest and aching legs but he ignored it. It was a cake walk compared to where he was heading. All Aurora-class ships (and John was hoping like crazy this was Aurora class, because anything else would be a maze to him) had inside and outside emergency access to the crawl space running throughout the ship. This crawl-space allowed access to more hard to reach systems.

The setback was that, inside and outside, there were only four access doors in all: at the front and back and on either side of the ship. He didn't have a choice as to where he came out.

With each step, John had to pull away more mud and vines. The further he went, the more solid the mud where the water was already beginning to dry. Pulling became digging, ripping his fingernails and cutting up his hands with bits of rock shards. But he found the box protecting the door's switch and yanked on it. The damn thing stuck. Leaning precariously back, John put all of his weight into it. The switch gave, the door slid open swallowing the dirt covering it, and John almost fell. Keeping tight hold of the switch he pulled himself forward back onto the ladder and climbed the rest of the way into the duct.

Inside was wide enough for him to crawl on his hands and knees. Both inside access could be found in the cargo holds on the left and right side of the ship. As good a place as any to start if that was where they were keeping their weapons. If not, John still knew where to find a few LSDs. He scuttled as quietly as he could through the silver tunnels, the position doubling the aches in his chest and legs, the close air making his lungs feel three-times smaller, and trying not to cough almost suffocated him. He had to stop and rest frequently, maneuvering onto his back to give his chest a little break. Sitting up would have been better, but the duct didn't give him a choice.

On finally reaching the access door, John pressed his ear against it, exhaled slowly then stilled his breathing. He listened.

Nothing. At least nothing close enough to be heard. The ship wasn't exactly sound proof but pretty close, and John had discovered that to be heard you had to be standing right smack next to the entrances.

John wasn't a gambling man, not when lives were at stake. But sometimes life called and you had no choice but to lay your cards out on the table. Pulling the shock-stick from his belt. John shifted himself so that he was on his toes, spine scraping the top, his body ready to lunge if needed. He passed his fist over the crystal panel and the door slid open.

Warm air pressed against John and it was heaven. Everything was dimly lit and dead quiet save for the hum of recycled and warm air. Breathing out, John tucked the stick back into his belt and climbed down, palming the access door shut. He eased himself to the floor, pulling the stick as he darted behind a wall of crates. The crates were wood, nailed shut and stacked too high to access any. John darted from stack to stack until he came to the wall where there should be a hidden drawer with a few LSDs. McKay had discovered the little secret after finding a bulletin in the Orion's systems reminding the crew to monitor all cargo from research outposts for any unregistered lifeforms attempting to hitch a ride – the wording not exact. Therefore the need for LSDs in the cargo hold.

Life was once again playing fair. He palmed the drawer, it opened and there sat one lone LSD.

With the comforting warmth of an LSD in one hand and the shock-stick in the other, John crept to the cargo bay doors. According to the LSD, there was no one outside, which meant that whatever was in this hold wasn't that important. Ergo, no weapons.

Shock-stick only it was, then. John grimaced. He'd have to get in close enough to use it and didn't doubt it would eventually lead to hand-to-hand combat. He didn't mind a little hand-to-hand when he was healthy enough to deal.

He was currently far from healthy.

John shed his coat, balling it up then tossing it has high as he could onto a crate two crates above him. He shivered, the warm air blocked by the damp, thread-bare shirt clinging to him like a second skin trying to peel off. He was going to have to play one hell of a game of hide and seek and didn't need the weighty coat tripping him up.

But first he needed a destination, and knowing Rodney, that destination would be auxiliary control where he would have access to all the systems, determine what needed to be repaired and where. And even if he wasn't there at the extreme moment, he would eventually need to return.

If not, John could use the control room himself to track Rodney's where-abouts. McKay had given everyone a crash course in how to program the ship-wide LSD to pinpoint subcutaneous transmitters in case the ship was overrun by hostiles; that way everyone knew who was who and where inot/i to vent atmosphere should it ever come to that.

John closed his eyes briefly, mapping his path and what lay between through recollection. There were plenty of places to duck into if needed – rooms, closets. Certain corridors would be a problem so he'd have to move fast.

Piece of damn cake.

With a sharp nod and every muscle coiling in readiness and resolve, John palmed the door open and stepped out. He moved heel to toe as fast as he could while still minimizing any noise, checking the LSD frequently. The way ahead remain clear.

Still clear.

Still clear.

Not clear. John's heart jolted and he ducked into a room, slinking behind a console where he crouched, eyes glued to the screen like he was watching the Hail Mary pass for the first time.

Three dots moved agonizingly slow down the hall, closing in on where he was hiding.

John held his breath.

The three dots walked by.

John exhaled, then waited for as long as his nerves could take for the dots to move beyond the screen. John slipped out of his hiding place and continued.

Auxiliary wasn't that far, and except for the three interlopers the way remained clear. John wanted to be happy about it but he couldn't. Big as this ship was, it should have been crawling with people guarding it tooth and nail. A ship this big and this powerful, no way would anyone in their right mind not have every square inch of it covered. Unless they felt it that well hidden.

Come to think of it, it made sense. A lot of people equaled a lot of supplies. A lot of supplies would require a lot of supply runs, in turn attracting a lot of attention and pointing the wrong people the right way. As long as this ship remained hidden before it could be repaired, then it didn't need a crap load of personnel.

_About damn time something went right. _

John stopped before the door that would take him into the hall leading to auxiliaries. John checked the LSD and frowned.

There was no on there. Were McKay in auxiliary, there would be guards posted outside the door, and no one was stupid enough to have so much confidence in a fortress as to not have any guards, especially when McKay was a "guest." The man only needed two minutes to make everything go to hell for the people holding him captive. You don't put a paranoid geek in a control room without someone there to look over his shoulder every second.

Biting his lip, John ducked into the hall, then the control room. The systems were already up and running, meaning McKay had already been here. Either that or some of the bad guys had the gene. John wasn't going to wait to find out. He went to a console and brought up a schematic of the entire ship and activated life signs.

John counted about sixty, most of them clustered throughout habitation, with a chunk in the main control room, the brig, and about ten gathered outside and inside the second storage bay.

_Where the weapons no doubt are. _John sneered at the thought. _But you would have been caught, so get over it. _John recalibrated the sensors. Without a laptop or tablet, it wasn't easy. The Linguists had taught the expedition basic Ancient, numbers especially, but John keeping it all straight in his head made the going slow. The computer eventually complied with the request, and three dots turned red.

Three dots: one in the cabin, two in the brig. John's jaw slowly dropped and his heart jumped.

They were here, all of them – Rodney, Teyla, Ronon.

"Oh, this is too damn good to be true," and overjoyed as he was to know where his team was being held, it also scared the crap out of him. It had been days, now, long enough for the slavers to have sold at least one of his team by now. John was glad they hadn't – very glad – but the question as to why tempered that joy.

"What're you bastards up to?" John muttered. Then winced. He could be such a friggin' idiot, sometimes. Incentive: Ronon and Teyla were being held as incentive to force Rodney to work. Either that or...

John couldn't think of any other reason. Neither did he want to entertain any theories, except for the one where Ronon and Teyla were just too dangerous to sell. Now that theory he liked.

Five of the dots in main control – one of those dots red – started moving in his direction. John smiled. "I like my timing." He ducked away and crouched behind a deactivated console near the corner, being careful not to touch it. Several minutes later, the door whispered open, flooding the room with Rodney's voice.

"...can't have both. Not without those parts. So if you want shields and drones, you'd better hope none of your Neanderthals thought them pretty and sold them on the cave-man version of E-bay because rerouting can only placate so many whims."

John turned his head and leaned his body far enough for a quick peek. Rodney was already at a console, tablet plugged in and his fingers typing away. He was surrounded by four men, more road warriors in leathers and a tall man in a black leather longcoat. Tall guy reminded John a little of Kavanaugh, only with dark hair, more angular features and, of all things, a goatee – an honest to goodness goatee. All that was missing was a top had and a pencil mustache to caress.

"We can wait on the shields. Just give us weapons and sensors."

"Okay, that I can do... maybe."

John's lungs tickled harshly, building up into a torturous need to cough. He pressed his hand hard against his mouth and held his breath.

"No maybe about it. Dr. McKay. You know that."

Rodney's hand paused over the keypad. John couldn't see his eyes from this angle, but the knotted muscles in the man's back said enough.

"I know," Rodney said, emotionless.

"I'll be back in twenty minutes to review your progress." Then, without giving Rodney a chance to respond, tall guy and two of his cronies moved toward the door, leaving the third to hover at McKay's shoulder.

"What about Ronon and Teyla. How are they -"

The door closed.

"Doing," Rodney finished lamely. Shaking his head, acting as though the guard wasn't even there, Rodney went back to work.

John's lungs screamed at him to cough, except he knew that when he did, it was going to be very loud and very inconvenient to his need for stealth.

It was now or never. John slipped out from behind the console, moving in a fast crouch, heel to toe and silent right up to McKay's guard. The moment he was in reach, he jabbed the business end into the back of the guy's neck. The man convulsed silently before collapsing in a pile of rags and leather. John finally let himself cough.

"Sheppard!" Rodney yelped.

John held up a finger asking Rodney to wait as he hacked up a lung. It was a bad jag, doubling him over and emptying his lungs of every molecule of oxygen. Something cool was pressed into his hands, and over the coughs he heard the command to drink. John easily obeyed, gulping the water down. It lessened the jag enough for him to gulp in some air.

Hands tugged on his arm. "Sit down before you fall down."

John's brain said "give me a moment, I'll be fine" but his body gratefully complied, collapsing against a console then sliding down to the floor.

The coughing lessened, allowing in more air. Rodney asked with rigid concern, "Are you okay?"

John nodded rather than risk speaking just yet.

"Bull, you look like hell." McKay's worry and fear made him look annoyed. Pale features deepened one hell of a shiner on his left eye and another on his cheek bisected by a small cut. Ronon and Teyla weren't the only incentive being utilized. "Where the hell did you come from? How the hell did you get here? What the hell happened to you?"

"Shut the hell up and I'll tell you," John choked. He took another deep swallow from the metal canteen, the coughing jag finally over. "Actually, long story. Tell it to you when we're back home. In the mean time, we need to get out of here." But even saying it, John remained on the floor, catching his breath whether he liked it or not. He barely noticed McKay's hand pressing into his forehead, but when he did he shoved it away.

Rodney huffed out a breath. "You're burning up. You came to rescue us and you have a fever. That's just friggin' peachy."

John just shrugged. "Well... you know... it could be worse. I could be here and imprisoned. Or here and dead. At least I'm here and free and" he lifted the stick, then looked at the downed guard and the rifle lying next to him. Shoving both the stick and canteen into Rodney's hands, John scooted close enough to yank the rifle strap off the body, slinging it onto his own shoulder. "Armed."

"Well," said Rodney edgily, "better than nothing, I suppose." He twitched a nervous smile.

John clapped him on the shoulder. "Way to think positive, McKay." He looked the weapon over, getting a feel for it. It's basic construct was like that of an M-16, if a little more crude. He dug through the guard's pocket, pulling out two clips that he shoved into his BDU pockets. "I recalibrated the sensors like you showed us. Got a lay of the ship, including Ronon's and Teyla's locations. Except I have no idea how I'm going to get to them without getting caught. The area is too heavily occupied." Now more thoroughly armed, John turned his attention to tying up the guard using the guard's bootlaces and the guy's ragged scarf.

Rodney snapped his fingers and brightened. "A distraction. We need a distraction."

John, doubling the knots, nodded. "Preferably one that gets the majority of the population moved from point A to point B."

McKay, it seemed, was already on it, typing so that his fingers were a blur. "On it. This ship is so screwed up it's a miracle I managed to get anything working. Okay, considering this is me we're talking about, not that much a miracle. Still, this thing is as vulnerable as a new born kitten. If I could just..."

Alarms blared, warning lights flashed and the sensor popped back to life expanding beyond the ship to encompass most of the surrounding valley. Hundreds of little white dots now surrounded the ship.

John gaped. "Cool. How did you do that?"

"I created a virus and uploaded it into the main systems the first three days I started working on this thing. Nothing much, just enough to make the ship stupid enough to believe anything I tell it," Rodney said, grinning that big old smug grin of his. "His high and mighty lordship should be seeing the same. But we won't have a lot of time before they realize it's not real. Oh!" Rodney typed something else and the lights went dead though the alarm still pulsed. "Darkness plus chaos equals invisibility."

"And you didn't use this little trick sooner because...?"

Even in the dark barely broken by red warning lights, John could see Rodney's slight squirm of discomfort. "I was. I just... couldn't think of an escape I thought would work, all right? The scenarios in my head all ended horribly and... look, discuss later, move now, okay?"

Smiling, John gave his shoulder another hefty clap, then gripped the sleeve of his jacket, hauling the both of them to their feet and toward the door. "That's the bitch about escape plans, McKay. It's not about making plans, it's about taking opportunities. Like right now."

Rodney perked up. "Oh."

Rodney hadn't exaggerated about the chaos and the darkness. Between the strobing warning lights and men rushing to get armed and get ready, they hurried through the halls unchallenged heading for the brig. According to the LSD, the population was spreading out, taking up position around the various entrances. The number in the brig, however, remained the same.

The masses eventually thinned until the next hall they entered – the one just before the brig – was completely empty. John and Rodney slowed.

"I count about twenty in the brig," John said. "Two Ronon and Teyla. I'm assuming they're not the only prisoners."

They took up positions on either side of the door, John on the right and McKay on the left.

"No." Rodney gasped, sounding a little breathless and a lot edgy. "This is just a glorified holding cell. From what I could determine from what I'd overheard, they keep the slaves here until market day or something, then relocate them to this town where I guess they do the whole auctioning thing."

John nodded as he studied the LSD. "Figured as much." There were two guards just on the other side of the door, one on the right, one on the left.

"What I can't figure is why you weren't brought here," Rodney said.

John smiled. "Haven't you heard? I'm useless. On the count of three, I open the door, swing around and fire. You stay put until I give the all clear. Got it?"

Rodney nodded.

"One, two, three!" He palmed the panel. The door opened and John swung around, sweeping gun across without letting up on the trigger. Both guards dropped. "Clear." John grabbed a rifle and tossed it to McKay. Then he checked the LSD.

One red dot was on the right, the other on the left. John chose the closest of the two, the one on the left. "This way."

When they reached the turn in the corridor, John held up his fist. According to the LSD, the shots had been heard and three guards were coming their way. He waved Rodney back against the wall, pressing himself against it at the same time. He raised three fingers, pointed at himself then at the wall across from them. Where as Rodney had taught them basic Ancient tech skills, John had had the scientists go through basic – very basic – military training.

It had taken a while for experience to get that training to sink in, but sink in it did. Rodney didn't ask questions, he simply nodded rigidly with a nervous lick of his lips and slipped into John's spot when John bolted to the opposite wall. He didn't wait, signaling Rodney to go. They moved as one, Rodney leaning half-way around the corner and John stepping into full view, firing. The three heading toward them went down without a return shot to show for it.

"Move!" John barked. He took the lead, Rodney their six. The LSD showed two dots, one red. John charged ahead, firing and taking the final guard out. The body barely hit the floor as John palmed the forcefield off.

John's body kept moving while his mind stumbled over Ronon chained spread-eagle against the wall, bloody and bruised, flashing stained teeth in a drunken smile.

"Took you long enough."

"Sorry," John rasped. Rodney called his name and John turned enough to catch the keys tossed to him. In the process of unlocking Ronon's arm, John doubled up in another coughing fit.

"Sheppard?" Ronon growled.

John waved him off, resuming the task when he was able to catch his breath between jags. He unlocked one arm then moved on to the second.

"Sheppard!" Rodney yelled. Sheppard whirled to see two guards enter and pause, stunned looks on their faces. It was a split-second slip-up but enough for Rodney and John to raise their rifles and fire. One man went down, the other ducked, spinning out of the way toward Rodney and ramming the butt of his rifle into Rodney's gut. John aimed but couldn't get a clear shot until Rodney dropped.

The guard was ready, ducking when the shot came. He broke into a charge before John could adjust, slamming into John in a pile drive that smashed him against the wall, shoving the air from him. The man did it again, then again, pummeling John's back and front with a force that snapped his head against the wall. Pain exploded through his chest, stars sparked, the blood roared through his ears like a scream begging him for oxygen. He heard like a voice underwater someone screaming his name in rage.

John felt his body pulled away, then shoved again about to hit the wall. Only to crumple to the floor, gasping for breath and not caring how loud his ribs protested it. He blinked away pain-film and black moats and rolled his head to watch as Ronon strangled his attacker with one solid arm. The man gasped, kicking and choking and turning red. He stilled but Ronon continued pressing the man's windpipe. When finally satisfied, he let the man drop and looked at Sheppard.

Sheppard had never seen the Satedan so worried.

"Sheppard? Sheppard! Can you get up? Sheppard!"

Rodney appeared, cradling his middle with one hand and working the keys with the other. When Ronon was free he immediately dropped to his knees beside John, taking him by both arms.

"John, you need to get up. We need to move."

John nodded. They did need to move, and he could move. He let Ronon help him up, nearly dropping back to the floor from the thin slice of pain in his chest, radiating from cold to hot through his body. He cried out, he couldn't help it, which led to another coughing jag that doubled him up and squeezed tears of agony from his eyes. But he didn't drop, not with Ronon holding him up. When the jag passed, John leaned against the bigger man, just long enough for the pain not to try and floor him again.

"S-sorry," he gasped. He felt a big hand give him a gentle pat on the back.

"Can you move?" Ronon asked.

John nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. Let's go."

All the same, Ronon kept one hand on John's arm. On leaving, they paused only long enough for Ronon to grab his own rifle and a clip. "I don't know what they did with Teyla," he said.

"I do," John said. He pointed the way they had come. "That way."

They moved at a fast walk, and John couldn't help the self-annoyance at being the reason why they couldn't run, and why Ronon was minus the use of his other hand. But even one-handed, he didn't waste time or foul up taking down guards heading their way. That was Ronon in a nutshell, the king of multitasking and efficiency. He could probably kick ass with nothing more than a tea cup, just like that Riddick guy in, well, Riddick.

John smiled. Better yet, a spork. John would love to see Ronon take down the bad guys with a spork. Oh, crap, how he was getting delirious. John twitched his head, shaking it off, then forced himself to take most of his own weight and balance and add his own bullets to the fray.

All together, it took them less time to get to Teyla's end of the brig. They found her tied to a chair, just as bruised, bloodied, but still able to give them a smile that could have lit up the room.

"I knew you'd come," she said. Ronon handed John off to Rodney as he went to untie Teyla.

John looked down at Rodney's arm where the material over the shoulder was darkening. Blood was soaking through the sleeve.

"You're bleeding, Rodney," he said.

Rodney jolted. "What?" He looked down at his own arm and paled. "Oh, crap, I am! When did that happen? How could I not know that happened!"

"Adrenaline," John said, ripping off the sleeve of his own shirt and tying it tight around Rodney's arm. "Masked the pain. The bleeding doesn't look bad so it probably isn't deep. You'll be fine."

"Yeah, until infection sets in."

John winced. McKay had a point, but nothing they could do about it now.

"You didn't wipe your nose on that sleeve, did you?" Rodney asked.

John felt it best not to answer that one. He looked away from Rodney to Teyla who took him by the shoulders and touched her forehead to his.

"I feared... there was a reason you were not brought with us."

John smiled. "The advantage of being crappy merchandise." Then frowned. "You okay. I mean... You, you know, iokay/i?"

Teyla pulled away, wiping quickly at her unbruised eye. "I am fine. They know better than to do too much damage to their goods." She smiled. It was brittle, tremulous, but after a moment eventually reached her eyes. Whatever had been done to her, to them, no longer mattered. They were here, together, armed and ready to get the hell out of here and get back home, and that was all that mattered.

"Let's roll," John said.

"Um, not to be the rain on our parade but where, exactly, are we to roll to? They'll have all the exits cov – oh!" Rodney snapped his fingers. "Cargo hold. They have these, uh, car things in the cargo bay. I remember seeing them when I was doing repairs there."

John frowned. "That place is psychotically guarded, McKay."

"Well, right now it's our only shot because I seriously doubt the four of us will be able to move through this ship unnoticed at this point. Besides which, the moment we're out of here they're going to come after us, in those car things, and have us before we're even twenty feet from the ship. Besides iagain/i," he pulled his tablet from his zipped-up jacket, "I know how to even the odds."

Which was enough for John. He gave Rodney a curt nod. "All right. Let's go."

Rodney was wrong; between the darkness and chaos and most of the crew clustered at the various entrances, one out of the brig their way was relatively clear except for the lingering frantic soldier too busy trying to find his post to pay them any mind. John was starting to suspect that residence here wasn't permanent nor high-paying enough for people to really care, or someone would have noticed something odd about the four bruised and battered strangers hobbling down the hall. When they reached the bay, Rodney took the lead, already pulling the alligator clips from the tablet.

He tapped a section of wall by the door with his knuckle. "Ronon if you please... and by please I mean pry it away with a knife not shoot it."

Using one of the knives hidden in his hair, Ronon made short work of the small panel. Rodney connected the clips to various transparent wires.

"Now to say the magic words, and..." Rodney typed. John thought he heard a hiss, then suddenly the doors burst open and men flowed out at a run, shouting and trailing what looked like smoke.

"Fire suppressant," Rodney said. He unclipped the cables and stuffed them back into the tablet. "Convinced the ship the cargo bay was on fire and to take about ten seconds to put it out." He sighed. "Oh if only all enemy ships were this screwed up." He stepped into the cargo bay.

And nearly had his head taken off by a poorly aimed shot at extremely close range. Except Teyla had pulled him back in time and moved forward swift as a striking snake. She grabbed the serious end of the rifle, twisted it out of the guard's grasp and using it like a bantos rod gave it a hard spin into the guy's jaw, laying him flat. She then twisted around and fired at the second guard charging at them out of the remaining gas. He went down.

"Thanks," Rodney panted.

Teyla gave him a nod.

The "cars" were lined up against the wall near the cargo bay doors. Rodney hurried on ahead, hitting the panel to open the bay doors. Ronon vanished into the left-over mist while John and Teyla climbed into a car.

"Ronon!" they both shouted. The bay doors whined open, sucking away the remaining suppressant and flooding the bay with pale gray light. Rodney jumped into the back seat just as John started the thing up. Ronon returned only a moment later, a smile on his face and a familiar blaster in his hand. He jumped into the seat beside Rodney. John hit the gas, peeling out of the bay, tearing through the remainder of the "lake" and spraying them all.

By the time they were on relatively drier ground, they were soaked.

"Great," Rodney grouched, flipping water from his sleeves, "now I'm going to die from pneumonia."

John was too busy trying to keep the car in a straight line to reply. They could stay off the road, drive through the mud but the way John figured it, if the bad guys managed to follow they had plenty of markers to guide them to their quarry. The road would be better, faster, putting distance between them and the ship. Once out of the pass, John made straight for the road. Once tires hit concrete he gave the wheel a hard twist, rubber screaming on the man-made surface.

"Uh, not to once again be the rain on this parade," said Rodney. "But we have no idea where the Stargate is."

"It's back the way we were brought," John rasped, following it up with a cough.

"Back the way we were brought? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Pull over, you're obviously too delirious to drive."

"It means," John snarled, then coughed, then continued, "that unless we come to a turn off, there's only one path out of here and we're on it. It's the damn yellow brick road, McKay."

"Oh," Rodney said, and fell silent for a whopping two minutes. That had to be a record. "Um, Sheppard...?"

"Son of a bitch," Ronon growled dangerously. John spared a glance over his shoulder and popped his eyes wide.

Two cars were coming up on them, fast.

"Must have missed some guards," Ronon said. He whipped out his blaster that whined to life.

John pushed the gas down all the way to the floor, keeping a death grip on the wheel that turned his knuckles white. As a teen, when ever they'd vacation on the ranch in Nevada, John would take the rust-heap of a Camero he'd bought with his own hard-earned money and tear up the desert with it; windows rolled down and wind whipping his hair. It hadn't been flying, but close to, and developed in John an instinct for maintaining control at impossible speeds.

His current ride was a clunky piece of monstrous crap fighting tooth and nail against him, but it couldn't and wouldn't win.

"We can't keep this up all the way back to the 'gate!" Rodney shouted barely above the roar of the wind. And he was right. The size of the cars' alone had admitted to their crappy gas mileage.

Most days it was either flight or fight for them: today it would be both.

"Ronon!" John called.

"On it." The discharge was discernible above the scream of the wind. "Damn it! I can't hit any of 'em, they're too far out!"

"Aim for the cars!" John shouted, then ducked when something sparked off the metal bar around the wind-shield. A second shot seared across John's shoulder. There really was no way they were going to keep this up. Making a decision, John twisted the wheel hard, putting them back in the mud.

"What're you doing!" Rodney shrieked.

"Trust me!" The heavy wheels kicked up a spray of mud; not exactly a smoke screen but would do to make them a difficult target, forcing the bad guys to move around. "Rodney, get down and stay down! Ronon, Teyla, get ready to fire! Aim for the front!"

Their pursuers gained quick, the narrow road forcing them single file. More bullets pinged off the frame, getting too close for comfort. Teyla made a small yelp when a bullet scored her cheek, and Ronon arched back in time to keep a shot from tearing through his chest. John pulled on the wheel, zig-zagging the vehicle that was hell-bent on fishtailing over the slick mud. Sweat greased John's palm and he had to grip until it hurt to keep the wheel under his control.

His heart really needed to stop pounding, because his lungs didn't have enough room for the oxygen it was demanding. Yellow motes started skittering in his eyes.

The lead pursuing car eased up next to them, the sight of it making John's bones try to jump out of his skin. He pulled away from it, keeping himself and his team from turning into easy targets, as Teyla and Ronon fired.

Two of the five passengers packed into the enemy car went down. Then the front exploded in a shower of sparks igniting a fire that sent the driver careening off the road away from the fray. Ronon whooped.

"Premature, Conan, we still have one car left!" Rodney called. "And I think they've caught on to what we're up to!"

John glanced back. Rodney was right. The car was close, close enough for him to see the grime on the bad guy's faces from all the kicked-up mud, but keeping the course neither pulling forward nor backing off. Bullets bounced and sparked dangerously close. John flinched when a bullet scraped his arm. They all had no choice but to duck, making John's control of the car even more tenuous.

"I can't get a shot off!" Ronon snarled. John turned his head enough to see the big man hunkered impossibly small into the seat. Every time he tried to rise enough to shoot, a bullet forced him back down. Only the mud and zig-zagging stood between them and being dropped like paper ducks in a carnival game.

John longed for a couple of grenades, even a flashbang. "Anyone got any ideas!" A bullet lodged into the windshield, the epicenter of a web-work of cracks.

"Aim for the tires!" Rodney shouted.

"Not as easy as it looks, McKay?"

"We can't even aim!" barked Ronon.

John heard Rodney's frustrated growl. Then his gasp. "Oh, I know... Damn it! That friggin' hurt!"

"Rodney!" John shouted, trying to look behind, heart skittering even faster.

"I'm fine, just scoured. Hit the breaks!"

"What!"

"Daedalus, Wraith virus, F-302 - remember? Hit. The. i_Breaks_!/i"

John did, the car fishtailing like a dog shaking off water. The enemy car flew ahead of them, the surprise move startling the five men inside into inaction, giving Teyla and Ronon precious seconds to pop up like Jack-in-the-boxes and fire away. Three men went down and the front exploded, vomiting fire. John moved his foot back onto the gas and stepped on it, hard. He twisted the wheel, putting the car back onto the road. Behind them, the two burning cars shrank to fireflies in the distance.

John exhaled a sharp breath that declined into a coughing fit, in between which he managed to get out a "Nice... shooting... Tex."

A shaky hand patted him on the shoulder. Rodney said, voice just as tremulous, "Nice driving, Speed Racer."

They drove off into the sunset, where ever the hell the sunset was.

---------------------------

An hour could have passed, or maybe fifteen minutes, John couldn't tell. His focus encompassed only on keeping the car on the road and breathing in a way that delivered enough oxygen to his body without causing pain. With the bad guys far beyond them and no further attempts at pursuit, John's body had felt it an opportune time to release its hold on adrenaline. He could actually feel it drain from him like the flood waters of last night... was it last night? The night before – when ever. His energy was flagging that fast, reminding him of how tired he was; hungry yet nauseas, shivering yet so damn hot, and pain, pain, pain. So much as a cough made his ribcage cramp, but no coughing decreased the volume of his lungs.

The consequence of which was making it harder to drive.

For what had to be the fourth time – maybe more, John hadn't been paying enough attention to keep accurate count – the car almost veered off the road. The alarm squirted granules of energy into his blood, lasting all of two seconds before it was swept away.

"John?"

But now was not the time to stop. Far from it with that prison somewhere up ahead. Driving was obviously faster than walking and John didn't think it would take days to arrive; more like a day, day and a half.

"John?"

A small hand on his shoulder made him start, veer and fight to right the car. He glanced over at Teyla who was looking both concerned and contrite.

"Sorry," she said, curling slender, bruised fingers into her palm. "Perhaps you should stop and allow someone else to drive."

John shook his head. "No. We still..." he lifted a trembling finger - his arm weighing fifty pounds - pointing at the way ahead, "...still have one more place to get through."

"I can do it," said Ronon. "We had similar vehicles on Sateda."

But John shook his head. "No. We can't stop. They'll catch up."

"No, they won't," Rodney sighed, exasperated. "At least not in the time it would take to switch drivers. Think logically, Colonel – you're exhausted, sick and who knows what else. You won't last much longer and don't need to kick yourself when you further our injuries by running into some rock wall or something else. Pull over, let Ronon drive."

John's hands tensed tighter on the wheel. As much as he would love to acquiesce, a part of his mind – the part that had burned serve and protect into his very bones – hissed and cajoled like a commanding officer not to listen to the people around him. This current lull in their escape was nothing more than a respite capable of blowing up in their faces at any moment. They weren't safe, far from it, and because they weren't safe John couldn't rest.

It wasn't machoism, wasn't bravado; it was a fact of life. The moment John stopped, exhausted to the point of blindness or not, he wouldn't be able to get back up when needed. He really would be useless.

Worse, he'd be a possible hindrance, and like hell he was going to do that to his team.

The small hand returned to his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "John, it is all right. As long as we keep moving we will be all right, but you need to rest."

"Actually, we all need to rest," said Rodney. "But if it'll make you feel better, we can take turns. Hell, we'll even show Teyla how to drive so we can all be included. Everyone pitching in to let the others catch their breath. Sound fair?"

John's mouth twitched toward a wan smile. It did, actually. Easing off the gas and onto the break, he slowed the car to stop. But on trying to get out, dizziness dropped him like a rock to his knees.

"John!" Teyla called.

It seemed like only seconds later when John felt himself being lifted under the armpits and heard a deep voice rumble, "Got him."

John tried to help, scrabbling to get his feet under him. But by the time he managed it he was already being maneuvered into the back seat next to Rodney, who was shaking out a dark-gray blanket. John blinked dumbly at it.

"Where'd you get that?"

"The back." Rodney tucked the blanket around John. It was then John noticed a similar blanket covering Rodney's knees. "No wonder you didn't bark at me to sit down. I was rummaging through that crap the entire time you were driving." He tilted his head toward the small trunk stuffed tight with bags. After John was cocooned, Rodney pulled out more blankets, handing two to Teyla; one for her and one to put around Ronon's shoulders – Ronon had started the car and was easing it back into its last speed. Rodney then unearthed more foil-wrapped food and canteens of water, all of which John scowled at.

"All I got was one pack with a shirt and coa-" the need to cough interrupted him and, boy, did it hurt something fierce. It was a fiery pain radiating through his chest, pushing a strangled moan through his aching throat. He curled up against it, shivering harder.

His body sighed a whimpering thank you; his mind screamed "not yet, not safe." Except there was nothing he could do, even if he wanted to – and he wanted to. He very much wanted to. To placate that need, he pulled the rifle leaning between him and Rodney onto his lap, the business end pointed out into the endless landscape. It helped, a little – very little.

John startled when a canteen was placed in his hands.

"Drink," Rodney commanded. When John brought the metal bottle toward his mouth, his hand shook so bad he couldn't place the spout to his lips.

"Crap, Sheppard..." Rodney breathed, pulling off being both jaded and concerned. He helped steady the canteen long enough for Sheppard to get down a few swallows, then took it before it was dropped. When an open foil of food tried to replace it, John pushed it away with a shake of his head.

"N-no food."

"You sure?" Rodney asked.

John could only nod, curling deeper into the blanket. He was suddenly cold again, and so damn tired. He was aware like a man in a dream of Rodney handing a pack to Teyla, Teyla twisting around and leaning in to place it under his head, then adjusting the blanket. He watched with detached interest the endless land whipping by them, and if he closed his eyes almost thought they were flying.

His mind screamed no, not yet, not safe and when did you start letting your body call the shots? It was right. Crap, it was friggin' right and yet it wasn't enough to so much as lift his little finger. He was trapped in his own flesh, too tired to be scared though he knew he should have been. No matter how deep he let his imagination go with images of bad guys, guns and his team beaten and bruised, chained in a cell, it just wasn't enough.

John sighed. "Sorry... guys..." There were responses, voices trying to talk through water. John ignored them and whether he liked it or not, gave up consciousness.

Voices made him briefly resurface.

"...Like this for a whole day. The no food thing isn't really a big deal but then we have no idea if he ate anything before he found us. Getting water in him is what I'm worried about and we still don't know how far the gate is."

Rodney. John was pretty sure that was Rodney talking. Why was it so damn dark? More importantly, why weren't they moving? John was all ready to ask why, then he opened his mouth and heard a strange croaking sound that he realized was his voice.

"Rodney... I think he is waking up. John? John, can you hear us?"

Hands touched him, hands he couldn't see and it freaked him out, giving him enough energy to shrug said hands off.

"John, it is all right, it is me, Teyla. You are safe."

But John begged to differ, forcing his head to shake. "Prison -" he coughed and, hell, how it hurt. "Prison... prison..."

"What?" Rodney said. Then, "Oh! Yeah, that place. We passed that a long time ago. The road went right around it so relax."

John did, slumping deeper into the seat. Something cool and hard was pressed to his lips. When he was commanded to drink, he didn't hesitate, gulping cool water that ended up being taken away prematurely.

"You need to stay awake, Colonel. I'm pretty sure you're teetering on the edge of dehydration," Rodney said.

"Trying," John rasped, but it was so hard. As wonderful as the water had been on his parched throat, it had sucked him clean of the little energy he'd had and he could feel himself slipping away again. He fought it, accomplishing the opposite, and was out like a light.

The next he awoke, it was daytime – not morning per se, just not dark anymore – and someone was prodding his shoulder.

"About time. Drink, hurry." That was Rodney being his usual demanding self. When the cool lip of the canteen was pressed to his mouth, John happily did as told. It was hard to swallow without coughing – hard to do anything without coughing – and he suddenly became aware of how hard it was to breathe. So he made the mistake of hacking up the gunk clogging his lungs.

Once started, he couldn't stop, and each convulsive cough dug the unseen knife deeper into his chest and beat his skull with hammers. Then he was pummeled against his back, hard, and the gunk slapped against the back of his throat to go sliding down his stomach.

Big mistake. John's stomach twisted and before he could even gurgle an incoherent warning, he was leaning over the side of the car spraying the road with vomit.

"Oh, crap, slow down! Slow down!"

The car slowed, the wind dying, the vomit no longer splattering. John heaved and heaved then slumped into a shivering ball of pain, going at the canteen presented to him as though it had been years since his last drink of water. He rinsed, spit, then went at it again only to have it pulled away before he was ready.

"Let's not have a repeat of a moment ago," said Rodney. "Okay, we're good."

The car sped up, the wind tugging at his hair, clothes and blanket instead of toying. John felt tired enough too sleep for three weeks, but hurt too much to do so. Every breath pulled at his chest, tickled his lungs, but he was too afraid to cough.

"So if they thought you were so useless, why'd they keep you around?" Rodney asked. "I mean, you know, not that I think they should have killed you or anything. I'm just... being curious out loud, here."

"Probably not a good way to keep him awake, McKay," said Ronon.

"Hey, you said keep him awake, I'm keeping him awake. Besides, it's an innocent enough question."

John snorted, although it sounded more like a frog being strangled. "Wanted to... sell me to some... guy as his... play thing."

"Oh," Rodney said. His balking was made apparent in his tone.

"Not strong enough... smart enough. Not... a woman... Useless." He shrugged like it was no big deal, because it wasn't. Being seen as useless was good. They'd underestimated him and, golly-gee-whiz, how nice it was. He imagined his dad would have gotten a kick out of it – being useless having a use.

Teyla rose suddenly from her seat, pointing toward the horizon and the silhouette of a ring. "There!"

"I see it," said Ronon.

"Except we don't have any way to let them know it's us," said Rodney.

"I do," Ronon replied. "Found the GDO with my blaster. I have it in my pants."

"Oh, lovely. You can be the one to type in the code, then."

Ten minutes later they were at the 'gate. What happened after that, John didn't see. As soon as Teyla hopped out to dial the 'gate, the part of his brain that demanded John protect became satiated and shut down, taking his body with it.

-------------------------

John found his way back to consciousness on a cough and a dull throb in his chest, half-expecting to feel the wind tugging his hair and smell gas fumes. What he smelled was chemicals – clean chemicals. What he felt was warmth and softness all around, and heard the beep, beep, beep of a machine keeping time with his heart. Following on the heels of sound, smells and sensation were other muted aches and something bugging the hell out of his nose. He slid a limp hand up his body to his face and two plastic tubes – one under his nose and one going into his nose. By the lack of his stomach feeling like an empty pit, he guessed the latter tubing the reason.

Lovely, and he wasn't being sarcastic on thinking that. It was lovely, spectacular even. It meant they were home, being healed, being fed, being looked after.

It meant they were safe.

"You with me this time?"

John rolled his head toward Rodney sitting as relaxed as Rodney could get in a plastic chair, laptop balanced on his knees though he was leaning back, hands folded over his stomach. He was regarding John warily.

"Because if not, this would make it a grand total of five times I called Jennifer in prematurely, and I doubt she'd appreciate it."

John opened his mouth to respond. All that came out was a dull cough. Rodney was on it, holding an ice-chip within reach for John to take.

"Just nod your head."

John nodded his head.

Satisfied, Rodney sat back, refolding his hands on his stomach. "Good. About damn time." The look on his face was sober and just a hair's breadth from solemn. Normally whenever Rodney said such things, he was kidding. Not this time, apparently.

"You were unconscious for three days – relatively – six if you count the three days back on the planet. Jennifer said she'd never seen someone so exhausted before. You didn't even have the energy to cough the way you needed. And with the broken ribs... they had to put this tube in you to drain your lungs." His expression soured when he said this. "Before the, um..." he gestured at his own face, "feeding tube one. How do you feel?"

John let out a long, slow breath, deflating his body that felt like it was melting into the bed. He gave Rodney a tired look. Even after so many days of rest, he didn't feel any different. Less aching, able to breathe, and finally warm, but the old platitude of sleeping for weeks wasn't just a platitude.

Rodney nodded. "We were warned that it was going to be a while before you got anything even resembling energy back. That must have been one hell of a walk you took to find us."

John grimaced. i_You have no idea./i _"You... guys... 'kay?" he asked.

"Oh, just the usual cuts, bruises and mild infections. We'll live. You know, thanks to you, as usual." He cleared his throat awkwardly, then fell momentarily silent.

"You know, I realized something," Rodney then said, breaking that silence. He set aside the laptop so he could cross his ankle over his knee. "Ronon and Teyla are trained fighters. There was no way they could have been 'tamed'," he made quotations in the air with his fingers, "into anything anyone would buy. Even in that fighting pit I heard about – I mean, come on, you'd think a little thing like a gladiator arena would stop Ronon from escaping? Please. And you know Teyla would render any man looking to use her to plant his seed completely impotent. Those two were only good as incentive to get me to fix the ship. I kind of thought myself the only one with any worth for a while but, without the needed parts... yeah, I was just buying time for some kind of rescue or an escape plan that didn't end in us dying horribly. I could only give them one or the other – flight, weapons, or shield. Not everything. And they wanted everything."

John cocked an eyebrow. i_Where are you going with this?/i_

Rodney, however, shaking his head absently, didn't seem to notice. "We suck at being slaves."

John stared at him. Rodney stared back. After a moment, they both burst into soft snickers, John pressing his hand into his taped ribs.

When the time finally came for John to be released from the infirmary, his team surrounded him as escort back to his room to finish off the self-made promise of weeks of rest, ensuring he was brought food, water, and wasn't disturbed.

They sucked at being slaves; they rocked as a team.

The End


End file.
